What Does Chronic Pain Feel Like?

About 20 percent of American adults suffer from chronic pain. It can be hard to find the difference between normal (acute) pain and chronic pain, leading many to avoid seeking treatment. To learn more about how chronic pain feels, continue reading down below.

What is acute pain?

Beaumont Health says, “Acute pain means the pain is short in duration (relatively speaking), lasting from minutes to about three months (sometimes up to six months). Acute pain also tends to be related to a soft-tissue injury or a temporary illness, so it typically subsides after the injury heals or the illness subsides. Acute pain from an injury may evolve into chronic pain if the injury doesn’t heal correctly or if the pain signals malfunction.”

What is chronic pain?

Unlike acute pain, which often goes away on its own or following basic care, chronic pain lasts for long periods of time. With chronic pain, the pain signals fire in the nervous system sometimes for years. The pain may have been caused initially by a sprained back or serious infection, or there could be an ongoing source of pain like arthritis, but it can also happen even without proof of past injury or bodily harm.

What does chronic pain feel like?

Chronic pain is mysterious, relentless. The best way to describe it is through the words of people who’ve lived it.

“Chronic pain shatters productive lives. Chronic pain almost always is accompanied by depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem.”

Jed Diamond

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

George Orwell

Other kinds of pain

Countless kinds of discomfort may accompany chronic pain, including:

  • Spinal stenosis
  • Vertebral Compression Fractures
  • Cervical and lumbar facet joint disease
  • Sciatica/Radiculopathy, or pain caused by a pinched nerve
  • Sacroiliac joint disease
  • Failed back surgery pain
  • Hip pain
  • Headaches or migraines
  • Post-surgical pain
  • Pain after peripheral vascular disease

Symptoms of chronic pain

Chronic pain can occur in your body. People suffering from chronic pain may have these kinds of pain:

  • Arthritis pain
  • Back pain
  • Cancer pain
  • Headaches
  • Pain resulting from nerve damage

The pain can be described as:

  • A dull ache
  • Burning
  • Shooting
  • Soreness
  • Squeezing
  • Stiffness
  • Stinging
  • Throbbing

If you experience chronic pain, you may have other symptoms, too. These could include feeling fatigued, having problems sleeping, or mood changes. The pain can lead to other symptoms, like anger, anxiety, depression, frustration, or low self-esteem. Thankfully, most of these pain symptoms can be controlled with treatments like ketamine.

What causes pain?

Normal pain can be caused by:

  • A skinned knee or elbow
  • A minor burn
  • A strained or pulled muscle
  • A tension headache
  • Post-surgical pain where the incision happened
  • Broken bones
  • A mild ankle sprain
  • Muscle, skin, tendon, or bone injury
  • Labor and delivery

Chronic pain can have similar causes but is more likely the result of:

  • Nerve damage. This discomfort is caused by injury to or problems with the somatosensory system.
  • Muscle pain. Issues with the skeleton’s muscles are a widespread reason for chronic pain.
  • Inflammatory pain, like arthritis, infection, or tissue injury. It may also be caused by conditions that happen after surgery.
  • Mechanical or comprehensive pain, such as compression of tissue by tumors, disc degeneration, or fractures, cysts, or bony structures.

If you suffer from chronic pain or other pain, research has shown that ketamine helps relieve many symptoms by strengthening weakened or damaged neurotransmitters in the brain.

Treatment for chronic pain

Living with chronic pain is never easy for you or those you interact with. New treatment options are bringing relief to those struggling with these symptoms. 

Ketamine is a prominent anesthetic known across the globe and used for decades. It is also a powerful pain reliever. Ketamine is especially useful as a pain treatment because of its unique ability to possibly relieve pain symptoms within hours or even minutes, rather than the weeks or months traditional medication can take for some people.

Research into ketamine for mood and pain disorder treatment is still ongoing, but it is believed that ketamine helps foster new connections between synapses and restore damaged nerve connections. This, in essence, rewrites the parts of your brain contributing to your symptoms.

Contact us at Revitalize Ketamine Clinic today to learn more about this innovative new treatment option.

 

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